Remembering: Whack-O!

Posted by Traditional School Discipline January 02, 2021

Remembering: Whack-O!

Whack-O! was a very English television comedy series that ran in the late 1950s. It starred Jimmy Edwards as the headmaster of Chiselbury public school. Many episodes featured the headmaster flexing his whippy, rattan curve handled cane between his hands while threatening the boys in his charge with six-of-the best.

It is worth noting that no boys were harmed in the making of the programme. There were many threats but no cane-on-bottom action.

The series has mostly been lost to history but there are some bits and pieces, including at least one full episode, on YouTube.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) which made the series says this on its website.

‘These days it'd be hard to make a long-running series based on a schoolmaster who took pleasure in thwacking his charges and swindling everyone. Fortunately, in olden days sense prevailed.

‘Whack-O! featured the wonderful Jimmy Edwards as Professor James Edwards. Prof Edwards is one of the great characters of sitcom, an unapologetic, scheming drunk, who constantly runs rings around his fellow masters and thinks nothing of cheating and manipulating charges and colleagues alike.

‘Teachers v Pupils is standard fare throughout film and TV, but usually it’s like St Trinian’s – we’re on the side of the kids.

‘Whack-O! brilliantly realised that adults wanted to see a teacher prevail, particularly when the teacher in question was a charming sociopath.

‘Watching the series now is a little painful in one respect – we’re too sensitive to find canings amusing – but it’s right on the money in other ways, mainly because finding over privileged kids vile hasn't gone out of fashion.

‘Frank Muir and Denis Norden between them brought 45 episodes of Whack-O! into being, and the series ran successfully from 1956-1960.’

Whack-O! was revived for a short run in 1971-72. There was also a radio version, on the Light Programme, with 45 episodes of 30 minutes broadcast from May 1961 to July 1963. Many of these radio episodes were recovered by a BBC archivist from a listener's collection of tapes in 2012, and have been rebroadcast on Radio 4 Extra.

A film spin-off called (imaginatively!) Bottoms Up! was made in 1960 and has all the “comedy-gold” hallmarks of Whacko-O!, including an attempt at a mass caning of boys that ends with hilarious consequences! (if you like that kind of thing).